Reliving the past in everyday life may function as a constant reminder of an individual’s
past traumatic experiences, and if the person is not offered space in which to deal with
these memories, silencing persists. Many people who lived through colonisation and
other oppressive regimes carry what scholars refer to as “hidden transcripts”: secret
histories or experiences that go unrecounted. Lack of power and inequalities within
various societies lead to the silencing of some people’s voices. With the advent of
democracy and the Gender Equality Commission in South Africa, one would imagine
that the silence would be broken; however, many stories (those of women in particular)
remain unheard. The role played by gender in our quest to understand people’s
experiences of suffering in post-conflict situations has largely been unresearched. Many
women existed and many continue to exist within oppressive systems, and it is therefore
crucial to acknowledge their social suffering as women first and foremost. By talking
about suffering in general and universalising terms, we run the risk of “re-colonising”
these women and their experiences. In this article, I invite a critical re-thinking of how
we understand suffering as it relates to both the individual and the collective, and call for
the acknowledgement of gender as a unit of analysis.